Digital collections

Results for: Gravestones (44 collections)SCUA

Eric J. Brock Collection, 1957-1995.

1 box (0.25 linear feet).Call no.: MS 693

A consulting architectural historian and urban planner based in Shreveport, Louisiana, Eric J. Brock was born in San Francisco, California, but with deep family roots in New York, New England, and the coastal Deep South. The author of sixteen books and several hundred popular and academic journal articles on Louisiana history, Brock is a member of the board and former president of the Oakland Cemetery Preservation Society of Shreveport, a former board member of the Louisiana Preservation Alliance, a member of Save Our Cemeteries of New Orleans, of Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries, and a current or former member of multiple preservation and museum organizations. Brock has a deep interest in cemetery preservation and in the multi-faceted role of cemeteries as archives of architectural, historical, genealogical, and artistic importance and as benchmarks of cultural change and development.

With an emphasis on New Orleans and Shreveport, the Brock collection consists primarily of articles and newsclippings on Jewish and other Louisiana cemeteries.

Subjects

Contributors

Warren F. Broderick Photograph Collection, 1982-1983.

1 box (0.25 linear feet).Call no.: PH 028

A senior archives and records management specialist at the New York State Archives, Warren F. Broderick has published extensively on topics ranging from gravestone carving to the history of the upper Hudson River Valley. He is co-author of Pottery Works (1995), editor of a new edition of Granville Hicks’s Small Town (2004), and a contributor of numerous journal articles of historical subjects.

The Broderick Collection includes photographs of tombstones in Old Catholic Cemeteries in, Lansingburgh and Lebanon Springs, N.Y., and St. Josephs Cemetery, Pittsfield, Mass. The collection includes a folder of slides taken of St. Josephs Cemetery by Barbara Rotundo.

Alice Bice Bunton Collection, 1979-1993.

A local historian from Bethany, Connecticut, Alice Bice Bunton (1924-2000) was a long-time member of the Association for Gravestone Studies. Author of a book on the historic houses of Bethany in 1972, she attended AGS conferences regularly beginning in the late 1970s. Bunton died on October 18, 2000, at the age of 75.

Many of Bunton’s photographs documenting cemeteries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey were taken during tours associated with the AGS annual conferences. Also included in the collection are AGS conference brochures and other printed material, newspaper clippings, grave rubbings, and a small amount of correspondence.

Types of material

Joseph Dudley Memoir and Diary, 1866-1893.

1 vol. (0.25 linear feet).Call no.: MS 650 bd

Born in Cheshire, Conn., in 1822, Joseph Dudley learned “the marble business” from his father Elias, who had in turn been trained by David Ritter of New Haven. A staunch Methodist swept up in the religious ferment of the Second Great Awakening, Dudley joined his father’s business as a stonecutter in about 1845 and notes that he was among the first to letter tombstones in the rural Ever Green Cemetery in Woodstock, Conn., when it opened in 1848. He later worked in Meriden, Conn.

By generations, this volume has served as an account book, diary and memorandum book, memoir, geneaological record, and scrapbook, with each layer accumulated over all previous. Dudley’s memoir (beginning p. 78) includes a discussion of his upbringing in Cheshire, the tumultuous religious revivals during the 1840s and his reception into the Methodist Church and the Millerites, and much on his introduction to the marble business and work as a stonecutter through about 1853. The diary somewhat erratically covers the years 1873-1893.

L. Sidney Eslinger Collection, 1905-2003.

Lucille “Sidney” Eslinger was born in Albany, Missouri, on November 9, 1922, the daughter of Delano R. and Alice M. Willoughby Eslinger. After graduating from high school in 1941, Eslinger turned down an opportunity to attend college to work at Caterpillar Tractor Company in Peoria, lll., partly for the opportunity to play for the Caterpillar Dieselettes, the fast-pitch softball team. Through a co-worker, Eslinger developed an interest in history, becoming an active proponent of historic preservation in central Illinois, including graveyards. After retiring from Caterpillar, she and a friend operated a dog grooming business and she was active in the Humane Society. Sidney died in Peoria on August 14, 2011.

The Eslinger Collection contains materials relating to Sidney Eslinger’s interests in gravestone studies, including four books; a research notebook about Springdale Cemetery in Peoria; a photo album of Old Peoria State Hospital; correspondence and miscellaneous materials about stone quarries and symbolism; and a photo scrapbook, “Coin Harvey: A Legend in His Time.” States represented include Illinois and Indiana.

Roberta Halporn Collection, 1978-2002.

A writer, publisher, and expert in the culture of cemeteries and death, Roberta Halporn was born in New York in 1927. Although she entered NYU intending to study medicine, Halporn soon turned to dance, eventually earning a masters degree and working in the field for nearly two decades. When an injury ended her dance career, however, she changed careers to publishing, opening her own house in 1978. Her growing interest in the culture of death meshed well with her job and following her interests, she founded ran the Center for Thanatology Research and Education in 1986. Based in Brooklyn, the Center was a non-profit organization that worked to raise public awareness of the artistic and historical importance of cemeteries, and in addition to a library and museum, the Center ran tours of cemeteries, published books and periodicals, and operated a retail store. Halporn published regularly on topics ranging from Jewish cemeteries to hospice, thanatology libraries, and her passion, gravestone rubbing. Halporn died in 2014.

The collection consists of files relating to Roberta Halporn’s extensive thanatological research, including drafts, correspondence, photographs, and ephemera from two of her projects: on Chinese American funeral practices (resulting in the book Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors) and on Jewish cemeteries. A significant number of books donated with the collection have been added to the Association for Gravestone Studies Book Collection.

Types of material

Historic Burying Grounds Initiative Collection, 1876-1985.

2 boxes (0.75 linear feet).Call no.: MS 689

With the approach of the American Bicentennial in 1976, concern grew among historic preservationists in Boston that the city’s old cemeteries and grave markers were showing the damage of many decades of harsh weather and poor maintenance. Led by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, the Boston Landmarks Commission, and The Bostonian Society, with the collaboration of the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and the Association for Gravestone Studies, among others, the Historic Burying Grounds Initiative was established to develop a plan to inventory over 15,000 markers and assemble a master plan (1985, updated 1998) to care for the cemeteries in the long term. Supported by both public and private funds, the HBGI focused initially on stabilization, preservation, and restoration of historic artifacts, tomb structures, and retaining walls, and their efforts continue today.

The HBGI Collection contains reports and inventories from the first phase of work carried out by the Initiative, focusing on the Dorchester North, Central, Copp’s Hill, Eliot, Granary, Kings Chapel, and Phipps Street Burying Grounds. The collection also contains two editions of the Manual for Preservation prepared by the HBGI.

Contributors

Margaret R. Jenks Collection, 1983-1994.

2 boxes (1 linear feet).Call no.: MS 689

Margaret R. Jenks has been a family genealogist since 1964 and a cemetery transcriber since 1978. A prolific writer, she has published books listing all the cemetery inscriptions of the twenty-seven towns in Rutland County, Vermont, and of Granville, Washington County, New York, and she has conducted research on the stonecarvers of Rutland County. She served six years as a trustee of the Association for Gravestone Studies.

Subjects

Contributors

Allan I. Ludwig Collection, 1956-1966.

10 boxes (10 linear feet).Call no.: PH 034

An historian and photographer, Allan I. Ludwig’s book Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650-1815 (1966) played a critical role in the rise in interest in gravestone studies in the 1960s. Born in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1933, Ludwig received his PhD in art history from Yale in 1964 and became involved with the Association for Gravestone Studies beginning with the initial Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife in 1976. He received the AGS Forbes Award in 1980 in recognition of his contributions to gravestone studies. He has been a professor of art history at Dickinson College, Bloomfield College, Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University, and Syracuse University. In addition to his books Reflections Out of Time: A Portfolio of Photographs (1981) and Repulsion: Aesthetics of the Grotesque (1986), Ludwig has curated numerous art exhibitions and exhibited his own photographs worldwide.

The Ludwig Collection consists of many hundreds of photographs of New England and English gravemarkers organized either by the deceased’s name or by the town, as well as copies of all photos used in Graven Images. Also included in the collection is a copy of Ludwig’s dissertation on gravestone iconography and offprints of several of his articles.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--New England

Contributors

Association for Gravestone Studies

Ludwig, Allan I

Types of material

Nanette Napoleon Collection, 1960-1989.

1 box (0.25 linear feet).Call no.: MS 681

A freelance researcher and writer from Hawaii, Nanette Napoleon founded The Cemetery Research Project in 1985 to document graveyards and burials on the island of O‘ahu. She has subsequently completed inventories for the islands of Maui and Moloka‘i, documenting over 300 graveyards and more than 30,000 tombstone inscriptions.

The Napoleon collections consists of an array of articles on cemeteries and the culture of death from popular media assembled by Nanette Napoleon. One folder contains information on the Cemetery Research Project and cemeteries in Hawaii.